Many types of women's shoes are available on the market including casual and dress heeled shoes, i.e., women's pumps. These casual and dress heeled shoes generally have an innersole which forms a flat surface extending throughout ball and lower toe portions thereof, an upwardly inclined surface extending throughout an arch portion toward a heel portion, and a flat surface extending throughout major areas of the heel portion. The heel portion of the sole of the shoes is generally raised relative to the ball and toe portions and is supported by an outersole having various height and width heels.
A common problem with these type of women's heeled shoes is that when wearing these shoes the wearer's weight is shifted primarily toward the ball and lower toe portions of the wearer's foot and the underlying ball and toe portions of the shoe. The ball portion of a foot generally receives a majority of the normal pressures of a foot and, more particularly, a metatarsal region of the ball portion of the foot. Accordingly, wearing these type of women's shoes for an extensive period of time, for example, may cause soreness, callouses, and possibly even foot damage to the wearer.
Women also generally wear nylon stockings or other hosiery with these heeled shoes. Although developments have been made at protecting the stockings when positioned on the foot of a wearer, such as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 1,727,586 by Condon titled "Stocking Protector" and U.S. Pat. No. 1,889,716 by Walker titled "Hosiery Protector", these stocking protectors fail to provide any type of cushioning protection for the wearer's foot.
Additionally, most women's shoes are designed more with an eye to fashion, and usually at the expense of comfort. This is increasingly clear in view of trends whereby shoe manufacturers design the woman's shoe itself to provide more comfort. Nevertheless, these shoe manufacturers have not been very successful with instituting comfort, yet still maintaining eye appeal.